In fields such as pharmaceuticals, the electronics industry, semiconductor manufacturing, and the like, there is the need for high degrees of cleanliness with few contaminants such as airborne microorganism particles or non-microorganism particles in the air in the production environment. Airborne contamination can be broadly divided into insoluble contamination and soluble contamination. Moreover, in the manufacturing processes, there is the need for solutions or water with high degrees of cleanliness, from which contaminants have been removed.
For example, International Application Publication No. WO 2010/080643 (“the WO '643”) describes a detecting device that discriminates between non-biological microparticles and biological microparticles included in an aerosol. Moreover, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-121315 (“the JP '315”), for example, describes a method for counting particles in a liquid, using a liquid particle counter. In this method, a laser beam is directed at the medium to be measured, the intensity of scattered light is measured, and the intensity of scattered light is converted into a particle diameter, to thereby include counts, for each particle size, of the particles that exist in the medium being measured, using what is known as the “light scattering technique.”
As described above, in a production environment that requires a high degree of cleanliness, the state of the air is inspected, and preferably is maintained in a state wherein there are few airborne particles. Moreover, in the liquids used in the manufacturing process as well, such as pure water, preferably the degree of purity is maintained. A particle detecting device, for use only with gases, such as described in the WO '643, and a particle detecting device used only with liquids, such as described in the JP '315, are used in parallel. Moreover, in the production environment, preferably the particles that are solids adhered to a clean bench, or the like, are also detected. Given this, an aspect of the present invention is to provide a particle detecting system and particle detecting method wherein it is possible to detect particles sampled from a plurality of locations using a single particle detecting device.